by Gloriana » Sun Apr 09, 2006 2:08 pm
Your questions answered!
nameless.Cocodrilo
Will there be more items that unlock potion belt slots?
Zajeer answered - Yes, he plans to put more higher level items in game that will unlock potion belt slots.
XeroOmega (so good to meet you!)
are there any plans to add more port-potions to the game?
Maddoc answered - Under consideration.
not really shaman specific, but why put so many hard-hitting see-invis mobs in the way of travelling to many instanced missions? specifically when travelling to Razorthorne, and a handful of other missions in the most recent expansions.
Maddoc answered - There are plans to look into this and modify if necessary.
siludorf
Siludorf had quite a few spell related/class balance questions that I asked Prathun. The questions were complicated, so I told Prathun I would email him the questions when I got home for more in-depth review.
Here are the questions:
1st Question:
If a raid mob is designed to resist spells at a balanced rate with Malosinia, Tash and Hos taken into account, does it not put shaman, who do not have resist checks on their dots or nukes, at an inappropriate disadvantage?
Prathun said - Raid mobs shouldn't have high resists so that most spells just don't land.
2nd Question:
If priest (cleirc, druid, shaman) hps are supposed to be roughly equal based on the hps/mana on the class only anguish armor, (285hps/300mana) for anguish cleric/shaman/druids bracers for example; and with canibalization being a 2k dd, and regular canni being a 900hps dd, are shamans not in effect, sitting at *least* 1k hps bellow their counterpart priests at all times? How is this sort of balance justified vs ae's and other things that may be happening during a raid.
Prathun said - where would the extra hitpoints come from? Possibly a question for Zajeer (itemization). He mentioned that shaman typically share wis (cleric/druid/shaman) gear drops.
3rd Question:
Clerics have a group heal over time 900 / tic, with a 2.25s recast time. Shaman have a group heal over time 630 / tic, with a 18s recast time. When it takes 6 seconds for a heal over time to even have any affect, what is the justification for the recast time, considering one of the shaman's primary roles at raids is to um-mem spells in order to buff.
Several shaman were around when I asked Prathun this question and we were all very interested in the idea of losing the recast on Ghost of Renewal.
4th Question:
Shaman had a unique ability that cost 9AA's and can be used every 2 minutes. Now rangers have a similar spell, half the knockback but a reuse time of 6 seconds and almost unresistable. Are there any plans to fix VP, that is to make it chromatic and to reduce it's recast time? Or to add additional AA that will reduce it's casting time and/or make it harder to resist?
Oshran answered - He was not opposed. I will follow up with an email.
5th Question:
Given that SoE believes that mana regeneration is balanced with spell casting times and spell costs and given that SoE believes that 100/74.5/65 ratio of heals is balanced.
Will follow up with Prathun via email.
Are shaman not losing out on their ratio of heals within a given interval when they need to stop healing in order to regenerate mana, yet the other 2 priest classes do not need to stop. (Regenerate mana includes cannibalizing and healing that canibalized mana).
Prathun said this was a class balance issue. The other priests have no way to get back mana back quickly like shaman do.
baguetteovenfresh
I am wondering when shaman will get the get out of jail free card that almost every class (excepting mage, beastlord - who might have some evasive disc for all i know) in the game has. We are the only class that have simply no way to reduce our aggro or flat out escape it entirely for a period of time whereas every other class has this. Can we at least get a parry type buff, or dull pain?
Discussed this with Oshran. Possible change to our defensive AA. I will follow up in email since the guy just took over AAs last week!
Gandel
Any chance for a group Harnessing of Spirit spell?
Prathun answered - he said that sounds reasonable.
Bigsnack For'Mobs
Will the Devs reconsider making our epic 1.5/2.0 range equippable (secondary is possible but only if the AC is adjusted a lot and it is made a "shield")? It's very frustrating to do all the work and basically get an inventory clicky.
Zajeer answered - he said no.
fuzzy
Is there any consideration to changing the rules and re-tuning LDoNs so that they may be soloed? Or making the LDoN only spells available through some other means?
There was discussion about balancing re-tuning LDON points to make them more in tune with current equipment cost.
Maxpower
why are PoK potions the only ones that can be made 5 at a time? (besides the obvious 5 vials in the recipe compared to the 1 in the rest)
Maddoc answered - he said one of the issues might be the 10 slot alchemy container. We'll talk more about it.
Henora
Is there any chance of getting additional filters for buffs wearing off pets? I'd like my pet to be able to use bard songs and auras, but the spam is just out of hand. It would be nice to be able to seperate spells wearing off MY pet.
Nome answered - he will look into it.
Are the problems with illusions and auras being worked on? There are severe problems with targetting with the mouse when you are illusioned and using an aura.
Uh, this was mentioned but I didn't write anything down for some reason. I will try to find out, sorry!
Any plans for increasing the number of effects that can fit in the short term buff box? In my regular group (bard, warrior, cleric, shaman, rogue + 1) we are often overflowing the box now.
Nome answered - he will look into it.
Kerowen
Question: Why can you use the Magus in the guild lobby to travel places but cant travel back to the guild lobby?
This question came up during the summit. General dev consensus was they were willing to look into it.
Serj
Why don't Anguish boss mobs drop 2 quest armor pieces?
Zajeer answered - this is by design.
Why do PoR boss mobs have what seems like an endless number of hps? Porthio being a prime example of this. Once you figure out the fight and have everything under control it shouldn't take 30-60 minutes to beat the encounter because the mob has insane regen or his hps are through the roof. Yes, shamans shine in fights like this, but it's just not fun anymore.
Oshran designed this encounter and he said there was a bug for Nightshade where he was regenning a ton but this has been fixed. He said that the mobs should have a normal number of hitpoints for raid mobs.
Henora
Are there any plans to expand on the guildhall?
This came up quite a bit in summit and panels. They are definitely interested in adding to the guildhall, it was created so it could be expanded on (extra doors upstairs, for example). Two things that were mentioned as possibilities - zone directly to bazaar and the possibility of earning trophies for first kills that could be hung and displayed.
HuacaWuaca
I asked a few years ago at a Fan Faire about putting in missions or something so you could change your deity. The devs said they liked the idea and would pursue it, but haven't heard anything since.
Maddoc answered. He said this is unlikely since deity has a lot of important ramifications to character profile.
Also, I wish you could have a suffix with either your deity or starting city.
Maddoc answered. He said this was not unreasonable, but no plans.
fendaann
I tihnk the real issue is finding second way to get LDoNs points for each camp.
maybe the Camps can have Single Tasks quests for LDON points and not go into a instances and hunt in a real underused zones. I don't think the DEV want to creat instance zones for singles.
But RGC and other Sham spells we need the points to get them
There were a lot of discussions about improving LDONs. I mentioned this, but no definite answer.
Beafly
Are there plans to remove the apparent limit on the number of Audio Triggers we can have active at a time?
Discussed this with Jamie Ryan and Nome - they were interested in exactly what you meant by "active" so if you could follow up with me in a PM, that would be great. They said it wasn't unreasonable, one of the issues is around resource limit.
Kneesmasher
I would like to be able to memorize more than 10 spell sets. Do they plan to expand spell sets you can Mem from 10 to maybe 20?
Nome answered - he will look into it.
Cereall
Why can't shrouds equip all/all armor, or class specific items that associate with that class (i.e., using rogue shroud should be able to equip a rogue dagger bought in the Bazaar)? As of now, using a shroud is practically pointless. A level 70 "cleric" shroud can't begin to compete with even a badly equipped Bazaar cleric.
Maddoc answered. All/all armor has the potential to increase shroud power too much. Current balancing is based on shroud specific armor.
fendaann
I never use scale of Wolf, takes to long to load up, it has the breakage, why can't the, load be shorter.
Prathun answered - willing to look into it (part of the downtime rebalancing, shouldn't be unfun to mem spells)
Catmandew
I am probably the only one in the game that uses the potion Distilate of Health, but is there any way that SOE could look at the amount of HP this increases base by? Looking at the Clarity line of potions, the X level is a 14mana per tic increase, same as KEI, but the Health potion is a base increase of 468hp, which is not even Temp level, a 40 level spell, much less Virtue, which is about the same level spell as KEI.
Maddoc answered. He didn't think comparing KEI and Virtue was a fair comparison for the potions.
shamuofxev
removal of the "load spell" recast penalty would be my biggest wish. there's always one ranger that wants champion just that second, and doesn't grasp the 1 min delay even if I load it right away
talked about this a lot with Prathun - how annoying it is to have to keep spells memmed at all times. It might be part of the balancing with champion, but I will follow up with him in email.
Other - not sure who submitted these, sorry!
Related to above champion spell. If spells could have timers like the epic. To see long recast spells in your spellbook halfway grayed out and ticking back to active status.
maddoc answered - Too resource heavy for the character file.
Why can you bind in the guild lobby, not the guild hall.
Maddoc answered - it is instanced. if the instance wasn't up, gate would fail.
I bring you gold and silver moons,
And diamond stars, and mists that float.